[lelandfe]

> Mad Men's popularity hinged on style over substance

To the contrary, all of the fan base at the time hinged on character developments! Married Pete got Peggy pregnant in the first episode, was anything ever going to come of that? would Don ever stoop so low as to make a pass at Joan? would Roger and Joan's series-long tryst blow up their respective relationships? etc etc

A lot of it is left un-shown, as each season jumps ahead in time. You slowly figure out what happened during those jumps by inference. I thought it was great.

[twoodfin]

One attribute of the show I greatly appreciated was patience. We don’t get a “real” moment between Don and Joan—obliquely answering the “why not” question—until late in Season 5. It’s immensely more powerful and satisfying as a result. (Not to mention what happens later.)

The Don and Peggy relationship is also a fantastic slow burn.

[lelandfe]

I think about that scene a lot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WxUJ2qSp_E

"The only sin she's committed is being familiar."

[allturtles]

I felt like none of this really paid off. Peggy has a child, that should be a life-changing event, but it's just ignored for the rest of the show because it's not convenient for where the writers wanted to take her character, I guess? I have to agree with other commenters that the show was stylistically impressive but dramatically hollow.

[twoodfin]

It is life-changing, and echoes in Peggy’s character and relationships through the entire series, as well as being called out explicitly at half a dozen key moments.

Peggy’s baby is a crystallization of the contrast between her and Don. Don tells her, “It will shock you how much this never happened.” He is always running, ignoring what life repeatedly tries to teach him. Peggy makes the decision to give up her baby the keystone of her character: She could have had Pete and the life of an adoring housewife, instead she embraced her choice and consciously took a different path.

What the writers resisted was the potential melodrama of reintroducing the baby to Peggy’s life in some way. But that would have undermined the moment of Peggy’s choice: It was gone.

[allturtles]

That's all very tidy, but what you've described is barely in the show at all.

Until reading your comment my recollection was that she left it with her sister; apparently that's wrong and you can figure out what really happened by piecing together a few different short scenes across several seasons. As someone who watched the show as it came out over 8 years, it was like the baby fell off the face of the earth with no explanation.

[twoodfin]

The baby did fall off the face of (Peggy’s) earth. She gave it up shortly after it was born. That’s it.

As I said, it comes up again and again. Most directly in “Meditations in an Emergency”, wherein she tells Pete the whole story of his baby and why she gave it up.